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Journal of Development Studies,
Vol. 42, No. 7, 1130–1157, October 2006
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping:
Cultivating Open-Mindedness
in Development Studies
WENDY OLSEN
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
ABSTRACT Pluralism adds depth to the mixing of methods in development studies. Global
society has both structure and complexity, and agents within society actively promote competing
ways of describing and interpreting that society. Theoretical pluralism offers a way for social
scientists to describe and judge the competing theories about a given social situation.
(Methodological pluralism is also discussed in this paper.) An example – tenancy in India – is
explored to illustrate how pluralists compare theories. The tenancy literature includes
neoclassical, institutionalist, and Marxist theories. These cut across three academic disciplines.
Pluralist research is often interdisciplinary in such ways. Such interdisciplinary research
generates a dialogue across epistemological chasms and across theories that have different
underlying assumptions. Pluralist research can be valued for its discursive bridging function.
Pluralist research can also contribute to improvements in scientific measurement. Divergent
schools of thought can be brought into contact by reconceptualising the objects of research, such
as contracts or coercion. In the tenancy literature, alternative ways of measuring and interpreting
power arose. Structuralist approaches tended to assume poverty and inequality as part of the
context within which economic action takes place. Strengths and weaknesses of such assumptions
are examined. The approach recommended here, which is realist, makes possible an improved
dialogue about policy changes aimed at poverty reduction.
I. Introduction
Renting land is a multi-dimensional, multi-market transaction which fascinates
scholars. The act of renting land in or out is both an intentional act of agency, and a
fluctuating part of the class structure which distributes resources. In this paper deep
divisions among theorists will be shown to have implications for poverty studies. In
particular, the neoclassical and new institutionalist economists, who theorise tenancy
differently from political economy, find that they have to build bridges with political
economy before they can embark on linking their research to the anti-poverty
agenda. The specific bridges built in this paper relate to measuring the productivity
Correspondence Address: Wendy Olsen, The Institute for Development Policy and Management,
University of Manchester, UK M13 9PL. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 0022-0388 Print/1743-9140 Online/06/071130-28 ª 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00220380600884076
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1131
of tenants; the ethics of challenging poverty in the sharecropping literature;
discussing landlords’ power explicitly; relating government regulation to the
empowerment of tenants; and using a relational approach to poverty rather than
a residual approach. The paper arrives at these substantive points through a
methodological lens. The assumptions associated with realism are described in this
initial section. In development studies, the sharecropping literature proves a good
sowing-ground for cultivating a theoretically pluralist approach to poverty research.
In the rest of this introduction, I will introduce the realist approach that
illuminates the pluralist method. The paper then moves into the specific area of
Indian tenancy debates. Section II reviews the literature on tenancy and specific
empirical claims made in that literature. Is tenancy an important way for landlords
to exploit labour more efficiently? Is share-cropping on the wane in favour of
commercial renting? The reasons for these trends (and their interpretation) forms the
material in Section II. Section III examines the comparability of theories in the study
of tenancy. Section IV relates the tenancy studies to the themes of poverty and
inequality. A discussion of the moral content of theories is a highlight of Section IV.
I conclude in Section V.
Methodological pluralism1
Critical realists like Sayer (1992) claim that it is possible to have knowledge of social
structures even though that knowledge is both fallible and limited. Social knowledge
claims are fallible because of the complex interrelation of the real structures with the
diverse meanings of those structures to today’s society. Knowledge is also likely to be
limited in scope, since human knowledge cannot simply mirror or correspond to
reality. According to Sayer, false claims can be challenged through the use of empirical evidence, but there will remain a range of claims whose validity is contestable.
Each of these latter has some evidence in its support (ibid., 1992: 242–48). In
examining these competing claims, a pluralist comparative approach can be useful
because there is no single ‘truth’ that perfectly describes the complexity of the social
world.2 The meta-theoretical approach taken here, which is scientific realist, argues
that the comparison of competing claims is a useful project that helps to discern
which interpretations are most worthy (Smith, 1994). Realists normally argue that
there is no ‘pure’ stance on the world that is not mediated by the social context of the
narrator (Patomaki and Wight, 2000: 226). ‘There is no ‘neutral’ metalanguage with
which to compare competing theories. . . . However, this does not mean that
communication/translation across theories/paradigms is impossible’ (ibid.). For this
reason the phrase ‘critical realism’, which highlights the critical stance taken by the
narrator to the language used to interpret the world, is often used as a synonym for
scientific realism (Sayer, 2000a).
In debates about realism, scientific realism is characterised by a depth ontology –
the assumption that the world contains structures which interact with each other in
complex ways. Structures are defined as sets of related objects, whose relationships
show patterns which cannot be reduced to their atomistic components. The depth
ontology recognises agents who try to interpret the structures (Archer et al., 1998).
This paper will presume that a depth ontology offers a useful foundation for the
study of society, and that knowledge about society is necessarily embedded in its
1132 W. Olsen
historical and spatial context (that is in languages, cultures, and their trajectories).
Structure, culture and agency are widely recognised to be interacting dialectically in
society (ibid.), but realist approaches to social reality oppose the stronger forms of
postmodernism as well as challenging the methodological individualism that is found
at times in economics (surveyed by Sayer, 2000a).
Critical realism does not simply attempt to essentialise ‘the real’, but recognises
that its existence has implications for knowledge. Specifically, the real tendencies of
social objects can have effects (and hence can be causal) even if actors in a given
scene do not recognise these causal mechanisms. Thus some explanatory claims can
be false. In addition, that which can be considered to be true is likely to be subject to
contestation – particularly when we are trying to know about the social world –
because of the multiplicity of viewpoints that any society holds.
In the debate over peasant studies and ‘peasant essentialism’, for instance,
Bernstein and Byres (2001) took a scientific realist viewpoint. They argued that
whilst ‘peasants’ really exist, it is important not to oversimplify their situation by
merely essentialising peasants. Realists look for evidence about the world, but
carefully distinguish that evidence from the world itself, that is from reality. Claims
based on evidence are subject to further refinement and improvement.
In summary, realists usually describe the world as consisting of three levels, which
are linked: structures; events; and empirical evidence. The evidence can give hints as
to the nature of the underlying structure. Evidence is simultaneously shaped by its
concrete historical context and origin, including the aims of the agents who try to
describe society. The problem of the possibility of false (or badly phrased) empirical
evidence is a profound one for social scientists.
Realists focus upon the essential attributes of a named thing, as well as the act of
naming. Scientific realism is the specific form of realism which questions the naming
of things since names cannot easily make direct reference (by correspondence) to the
thing-in-the-world that one wants to refer to (Sayer, 2000a). Things like tenancy
institutions are more differentiated and nuanced than words can say. Of course
essentialism would simplify analysis. In a sense words always essentialise or reify
‘things’. So do mathematical symbols in social theory. A number of realists have
argued that mathematical ‘models’, like ideal types, tend toward being irrealist
(Lawson, 1997). This paper aims to make explicit several ways to avoid irrealist
social science, and thus to improve research on poverty.3
The most obvious way is to avoid atomism. Atomism is the assumption that
society can be reduced to a set of homogeneous objects.4 Many social scientists
from a range of disciplines agree on rejecting methodological individualism, but
realists go further in exploring the implications of a depth ontology. (See Figure 1
for short definitions of the terms used here from the philosophy of science.)
For instance, is the ‘tenant’ a person, or a household? Obviously households have
the emergent property of being contracted to rent land, but persons are also
involved. Individuals agree to pay the rent to another household; individuals do
the work on the land. The interactions of persons with households are complex.
There is both nesting and layering between the set of households and the set of
persons. The ‘depth’ of a realist ontology also allows for other institutions, macro
regulatory systems, social norms and other entities to exist. All the entities
interact.
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1133
Figure 1. Summary of key terms
1134 W. Olsen
Several social scientists’ works (Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Roth, 1987; Sayer,
1992, 2000a; Harré, 1998) help to illustrate this realist view of the complex social
system. Berger and Luckmann, writing in 1966, noted that:
It is important to bear in mind that most modern societies are pluralistic. This
means that they have a shared core (symbolic) universe taken for granted as
such, and different partial (symbolic) universes coexisting in a state of mutual
accommodation. (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 142)
Berger and Luckmann took a critical realist position5 which recognised the
existence of structures in society. A standard realist formulation of the role of social
science, given this sort of complex ontic assumption, is offered by Patomaki and
Wight:
A significant part of what constitutes science is the attempt to identify the
relatively enduring structures, powers, and tendencies, and to understand their
characteristic ways of acting. Explanation entails providing an account of those
structures, powers and tendencies that have contributed to, or facilitated, some
already identified phenomenon of interest . . . Science is seen to proceed through
a constant spiral of discovery and understanding, further discovery, and
revision, and hopefully more adequate understanding. (Patomaki and Wight,
2000: 223–24)
Roth (1987) in a detailed study of how social science can come to grips with a
pluralist approach to knowing about society (that is a pluralist epistemology),
argued the case that all hypotheses in science are coloured by prior theoretical
frameworks.6 Theoretical frameworks reflect the inherent social, historical and local
grounding of the researcher. Habit, established discourses, and research traditions
colour our choice of theory (Kuhn, 1970). Roth argued that the social groundedness
of theories does not demolish the possibility of rational choice between theories. In
this he opposed the relativism of some postmodern methodologists.7 He argued in
favour of a conscious approach to theory.
Roth’s work supports meta-theorising (assessing competing theories), as does the
work of Bhaskar on meta-critique (see Olsen, 2003a, for a summary; extract from
Bhaskar in Archer et al., 1998). Meta-critique is the critique of theory, and of the
underlying society, aimed at choosing theories that contribute to the improvement of
that society, whilst challenging weak or inappropriate theories (Olsen, 2003a). Metatheoretical work is part of meta-critique. Meta-theoretical work, like the pluralist
approach described in this paper, involves attempting to view several theories’
character, and their strengths and weaknesses, from a vantage point that takes into
account both empirical evidence and the nature of the different available theories.
Meta-theoretical analysis is currently conducted by heterodox economists when they
compare heterodox theories with orthodox theories (see Dow, 2002, for a survey).
For development studies it is a useful technique.
Harré’s (1998) essay ‘When the knower is also the known’, argues that the expert
social scientist is embedded in society and is part of a system which includes
the ‘object’ or subject of their enquiries (see also Bryman, 1998; Layder, 1998).
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1135
By being part of the social system, Harré argues, the observer cannot avoid using a
self-reflexive consideration of the political impact of their social science. In Harré’s
view the observer is not neutral. The value-neutrality of theory is one of the tenets of
empiricist social science which realists have carefully questioned (Sayer, 2000b).
In an earlier work I explored the epistemological values that arise in social science,
arguing that there are at least ten valued dimensions of knowledge – such as validity
and replicability – of which value-neutrality is one of the most contested dimensions
(Olsen, 2003b). It is contested because value stances are often woven into theoretical
discourses in a taken-for-granted way. For instance, poverty research has an
underlying value-orientation which gives poverty a negative connotation. Some
causes of poverty, for example excessive inequality or coercion, may also be judged
undesirable. In poverty studies, part of each explanation has a normative resonance
or makes explicit a value judgement. Far from value neutrality, then, research may
need to be value-relevant.
One useful position on values and research was offered by Harding (1995).
Harding argued that researchers can attempt ‘strong objectivity’, by which she refers
to the uncovering of ethical stances and making deliberate attempts to compare and
contrast the implicit or explicit values of different theoretical discourses. Harding
contrasted strong objectivity with the ‘weak objectivity’ of using survey measurement procedures to create impersonal, replicable indicators of social phenomena.
Strong objectivity, as Harding called it, makes moral assessments explicit, as seen in
some political economy writings and in most anti-poverty literature. Theories’
ethical stances will be explored here (see Section IV), but the issues raised are large
ones which have also had lengthy treatments elsewhere (for instance, see Athreya
et al., 1990).
Realists have also advocated the combination of qualitative data with other types
of data. Bryman, for instance, argues that deliberate sequencing of quantitative and
qualitative research can usefully improve upon mono-method studies (Bryman,
1996). Analogous arguments were made by Harriss (2002), Jackson (2002), Kanbur
(2002), and Hulme and Shepherd (2003). Jackson, for instance, argues that social
and anthropological research should not be separated from economic research
(Jackson, 2002: 488–89). The idea of synergy between disciplines, particularly when
aiming for policy-relevant findings, underlies the whole ‘development studies’ project
(Hulme and Toye, this volume).
However several realists have expressed doubts about the feasibility of
triangulation when it includes survey data. Lawson (1997: 221) argues that nothing
more than descriptive statistics can be useful, since anything more sophisticated or
analytical rests too heavily on the categories into which people, cases, and variables
have been coded. Sayer (1992) argued that extensive research was not very
worthwhile, having made a biting critique of survey data (ibid., chapter 8). Sayer
also argued against combining qualitative (intensive) and quantitative (extensive)
research in one study. In his view the two techniques were too different to mix easily.
A revised realist position argues that survey data are inherently qualitative (Olsen,
2003b; also argued by Bryman, 1996), and that therefore methods are always being
mixed when survey data are used. The main difficulty then is in making sense of
survey data results given that their categories may be relatively crude, or too
homogenous across a large population domain. An illustration of methodological
1136 W. Olsen
pluralism in an Indian context is given in Olsen (2003a). Qualitative and quantitative
techniques were used in an Indian field research context (ibid.).
Under a revised epistemology, the qualitative and quantitative findings can be
reconciled. The two types of methods can be part of one larger project. A team may
be needed, rather than a single researcher. Whole disciplines, where peers review and
integrate findings across different research techniques, also reflect methodological
pluralism writ large. Sociology and political science each have a longer tradition of
mixing methods than does economics at present (Manicas, 1987).
Methodological pluralism refers to a mixing of qualitative methods (for
understanding things in depth) along with other methods for studying the nature
of structures. Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods illustrates methodological
pluralism. Realists advocate methodological pluralism because two types of
theoretical claim can be found in social science: (1) causal claims which have
explanatory content; and (2) interpretive claims which focus on what actions mean to
agents (Sayer, 2000a). With methodological pluralism a deeper, richer content is
offered to causal explanations.
Theoretical Pluralism
In combining theoretical with interpretive claims, one is likely to draw upon at least
two disciplines, as well as the two data types, for example when combining history
and economics one might use documents and survey data. Theoretical pluralism
involves looking closely at possible explanations of puzzling outcomes using a range
of claims from at least two social-science disciplines, or two theories. Since some
theories cut across disciplines (as Marxism is both political and economic),
theoretical pluralism is inherently multidisciplinary.
Pluralism in general has been advocated by a number of authors, who however
warn against relativism. Most authors refer explicitly only to methodological
pluralism. Roth, for instance, argues that: ‘methodological pluralism is not
tantamount to saying ‘anything goes’. We should be methodological pluralists in
the social sciences’ (Roth, 1987). It would be consistent with Roth’s argument to also
encourage theoretical pluralism.
Hacking, a methodologist specialising in the areas of induction and social
representation, argues that:
Systematic and institutionalized social sciences have their retinues of statistical
data and computer analyses that work with classifications of people. It is taken
for granted that these classifications work in the same way as those in the
natural sciences. In fact the classifications in the social sciences aim at moving
targets, namely people and groups of people who may change in part because
they are aware of how they are classified. (Hacking, 2002: 10)
It may be difficult for social scientists to avoid ethical implications arising out
of their self-reflective research. Meta-critique helps to enable well-informed choice
of theories. Methodological pluralism aids in the analysis and utilisation of
competing theories, and involves meta-critique. The rest of this paper will illustrate
these points.
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1137
Avoiding Essentialism
According to realists there are core mechanisms in each social system which
researchers try to grasp and describe. These core mechanisms might include social
structures like class and caste. These structures, however, also have meaning to
people and they can only be interpreted through a transitive (that is interactive)
process. According to critical realists, each social situation has a mixture of linked
transitive and intransitive elements. The deeper structures are mainly intransitive,
since they are not affected by how we describe them. (They are, however, subject to
social change.) The transitive domain refers to the things which exist in a fluid
relationship with human descriptions. The transitive domain is even more complex
than the intransitive domain and has mainly been studied using qualitative
methodology. The transitive domain includes the current construal of agents, such
as tenants and poor people. Should they be perceived in class terms? In caste terms?
Clearly there is scope for interpretive differences of opinion. Differences of opinion
among social scientists today must be added onto the differences of viewpoint of the
actual participants in these systems. Sayer (1992) argued that the communicability of
scientists’ discoveries today implies a need to bridge the discursive differences not
only among the participants, and among experts, but also between ‘lay’ and expert
understandings of a system. Thus instead of simply essentialising the poor as poor,
realists would recognise the inherent complexity of the task of description.
Sayer argued that social science’s complex object itself implies considerable
hermeneutic complexity and difficulty (Sayer, 1992). Sayer therefore took a
pragmatic view of epistemology, and in this he is followed by numerous other
supporters of qualitative research and of mixed methods (Kvale, 1996; Lawson,
1997; Harding, 1999). Sayer’s view is called ‘realist’ because he nevertheless admits a
prior, partly intransitive existence of the systems which are being studied (Sayer,
1997). A system is a set of structures and agents which interact, generating
complexity and emergent properties (ibid.). The systems are real.
To illustrate the relevance of this theoretical framework for the study of poverty, I
now turn to the analysis of land rental and poverty in India in recent decades (see
Figure 2).
II. An Exemplar: Indian Tenancy Research
In this section a review of literature is organised around four main schools (that is
groups of researchers). Some authors don’t fit in to a single school and they are
discussed later.
Tenancy Literature
In India, renting in land for a cash rent is on the rise and sharecropping is on the
wane, but 8 per cent of arable land is still rented in (Sharma, 2000). Fifteen per cent
of rural households are renting in land.8 Evidence from recent national datasets
shows convincingly a shift away from sharecropping and toward fixed-rent tenancy
(Shankar, 1999; Ramakumar, 2000). Many observers have noted that this kind of
rural commercialisation has not mitigated rural poverty (for example Swain, 1999).
1138 W. Olsen
Figure 2. Key theories of tenancy
On the one hand contemporary tenancy transactions are seen by some economists
as optimal choices which avoid the use of standard labour-market contracts (for
example, Bardhan et al., 1984; Skoufias, 1995). For a competing school of economic
thought, the indirect management of labour by landlords is part of a pattern of
control and manipulation which may have perpetuated the poverty of large numbers
of households in India (Bhaduri, 1983a; Singh, 1995; Brass and van der Linden,
1998). According to the Marxist political economy analyses, renting land out is done
by powerful households who prefer to arrange (some) cheap labour this way rather
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1139
than through the casual or permanent labouring contract. The overlap in the
substantive interests of these two schools of thought (neoclassical and political
economy) is considerable.
The regulation of land markets has long been a major concern of policy-makers. It
has been argued that making the tenure of tenants more secure would assist in the
growth of agriculture, and that policy in this area could be anti-poverty and progrowth whilst promoting tenancy itself. Is tenancy an anti-poverty strategy of
landless families? Or does tenancy reflect a desperate attempt to avoid unemployment by poor people whose returns are implicitly below subsistence, and who face
discrimination against them in other markets: the market for their produce; the
market for credit for production; the market for their labour? In particular, is it
possible that the tenants are exploited in a masked way, as the political economy
school has suggested? The debate has raged since the 1950s, with slightly changing
foci: in the 1950s land reform was central to the debate; in the 1960s aggregate
productivity of different farm sizes; in the 1970s the freeing of bonded labourers and
reduction of usury through state banking were prioritised; in the 1980s the effect of
interlinked markets upon market equilibria were explored, and efficiency of markets
was central to the debate at that time; and in the 1990s tenancy institutions were
deconstructed both through principal-agent models and through historical analysis
to reveal their changing nature and their heavy impact upon economic outcomes.
The differences between the main schools of thought on the subject of tenancy are
striking (Figure 2). Debates on tenancy within each theoretical school tend to be
somewhat narrow and intra-discursive, referencing other work within that school.
However there are also studies which cross boundaries and refer to work of two or
more schools.
If we take a focused look at debates about tenancy and poverty within India from
1960 to 2004, we find that research has taken place in numerous disciplines. For the
sake of highlighting the difficulties with reconciling quantitative and qualititative
research, I will focus on the main schools of thought summarised in Figure 2. My
focus here is on political economy and economics, although valuable mixed-methods
research has been emerging from sociology and anthropology, too.9 The mixing of
methods in the latter disciplines tends to stay within the realm of qualitative analysis,
whilst greater difficulties arise when trying to combine extensive survey data with
qualitative analysis (Kanbur, 2001).
The four schools compared here are neoclassical economics (involving market
equilibrium with given sets of rational agents operating under constraints), new
institutional economics, marxist political economy, and formalised political
economy. It may be useful to refer to these schools as NCE, NIE, MPE, and FPE
respectively, although it is important to note that only some specific works can be
identified as fitting mainly within one school.
Each school can be described briefly. NCE arose with the Marshallian marginalist
framework (circa 1870; Dow, 2002) and is oriented toward modelling the marketwide implications of rational individual choice. Prices, interest rates, productivity are
the main outcomes of interest to this school. The NIE school has arisen since about
1980 as a more in-depth analysis of choice under conditions of uncertainty, limited
information, and transactions costs. Most NIE studies are grounded on concepts
familiar from NCE: demand, supply, income, profit, and utility in particular.
1140 W. Olsen
However the NIE recognises that demand–supply models appear rather simplistic
and determinist compared with the underlying institutional complexity. An
institution, according to NIE, is a set of rules or norms for contracting in a specific
area of human life, for example marriage. These institutions were not explicitly or
empirically central to NCE.
Marxist political economy arose, too, from works written in the late nineteenth
century. MPE begins from a conceptual framework centred upon class, and proceeds
to analyse the trajectory of capitalist development. Its sweep is broad so that
prices become an explanatory factor rather than an outcome. Outcomes of interest
to MPE are the political power of certain classes, a changing class structure, and
the interrelations of regions or nations with each other and with their working
classes.
Formalised political economy, here labelled FPE, takes a modelling approach to
the class actors, placing ideal types into a mathematical model and manipulating that
model. FPE has drawn from both NCE and MPE resources. An example of FPE in
the poverty literature is Braverman and Kanbur’s analysis of urban bias (Braverman
and Kanbur, 1987). They provided a mathematical appendix following a detailed
argument on the causes of rural poverty in a context where rural and urban classes
interacted with government policy and with market outcomes.
Each school has a different ontology. An ontology is a theoretical schema of the
types of object that exist in society (ontic content). Within the NIE ontology, tenants
and landlords make decisions and influence each other as well as influencing major
economic outcomes. The politics and social aspects of the underlying society are
more prominent in the political economy writings, whilst the numerical measurement
of outcomes such as average productivity, labour’s real wage and the degree of risk
are more prominent in the NCE and NIE writings. Behind the overt ontic content
there are also implicit or explicit ontological assumptions. Ontology refers to the
theory of being, or in other words to the study of the existence of things.
In the NCE ontology, structures are ignored by assuming that only agents matter.
This is an example of an ontological assumption. MPE and FPE, too, have
characteristic ontological assumptions. As Figure 2 indicates, these lead toward
particular types of causal claim for each school.
The four main schools of thought described in Figure 2 have detailed explanatory
claims which are (pairwise) complementary, competing, or incommensurate. For
instance:
.
.
Claim 1 from NCE: Tenancy contracts can be explained in terms of landlords’
attempts to better utilise their land resources, and tenants’ attempts to better
utilise their labour resources and bullocks (NCE; Sen, 1964; Sen, 1966; Skoufias,
1995).
Claim 2 from NIE: Tenancy contracts represent an optimal solution to a gametheoretic problem of simultaneous rational choice of landlords and workers.
(NIE; Srinivasan, 1989; Majid, 1994; Genicot, 2002).
Claim 2 is primarily a different phrasing of what is argued in Claim 1, and NIE often
overlaps with NCE in this way. In Figure 2 the main areas of emphasis and typical
causal claims show partial commensurability and overlap for NIE and NCE.
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1141
There is overlap between the substance of NIE and NCE’s claims which extends
toward the substantive interests of marxist political economy. An interesting
example is Majid (1994). Majid reviews the declining role of sharecropping in
Sindh, Pakistan using NCE and NIE theory. However, he finds that landholding
structures which underlie the decisions of landlord and tenant are critical influences
upon whether and how sharecropping takes place. His study makes connections with
the marxist interest in the relations of production. Both labour relations and
operational land holding distributions are looked at closely by Majid. However,
because Majid’s main interest is in tenancy contracts, not in the dynamics of
landholding, the underlying class relationships remain merely background (Majid,
1994: chapter 10).
.
.
.
Claim 3 from MPE: Tenants are used by landlords who try to efficiently extract
surplus labour and to realize its value in the crop market (Olsen, 1996); therefore
one explanation of blocked technical progress is landlords’ preference for
retaining attached labour using usurious credit (Bhaduri, 1977, 1983b, 1986).
Claim 4 from MPE: Capitalism has a capacity for uneven development, including
different levels of technology and labour productivity even within pockets of a
single locale; these pockets of uneven development are best seen in class terms;
they are explained in terms of the profit motive of the landowning class (Singh,
1995; Brass and van der Linden, 1998).
Claim 5 from MPE: Tied labour including tied tenants in North India reflects the
tendency in capitalism toward deproletarianisation (Brass, 1986); deproletarianisation is a proximate cause of poverty of labourers amidst plenty;
antagonistic social class relations are the root cause (see Bhaduri, 1986; Singh,
1995; DaCorta and Venkateswarlu, 1999).
All three above claims from MPE tend to be incommensurate with NCE and NIE.
However authors within MPE try to explain and integrate concepts from NCE into
their research (for example Athreya et al. (1990) who are MPE in the assumptions
examined productivity, returns to scale, and profitability in their research).
Among the MPE writers, not all agree with claims 3–5. For example, Athreya
et al. (1990: 308–11) used the methodology of MPE but arrived at empirical claims
for south Indian agriculture that contrast with Claim 5 above. No constraints on
growth or productivity were found, so Athreya et al. challenged the model put
forward by Bhaduri (1983b). Athreya et al. used methodological pluralism. They
measured farm-level productivity using statistical analysis whilst underpinning their
study with a qualitative and quantitative class analysis, including the study of
exploitation (Athreya, et al., 1990).
Formalised political economy has gone further than MPE, but built bridges with
NIE, by exploring multiple interest rate equilibria, antagonistic contracting, and
differential collateral valuation (Bhaduri, 1977; Basu, 1984; Swaminathan, 1991).
In general, in empirical studies of the NCE and NIE schools, social relations and
inequality are little mentioned but they do shape the contracts and the market
opportunities which in turn affect the shifts in contractual forms and market
outcomes. Whilst MPE would phrase these changes in social terms, NIE and NCE
have tended to phrase them in methodological individualist terms. (They portray
1142 W. Olsen
households as if they were individuals.) Given that both approaches have much to
offer, a depth ontology may help researchers to unite and link these diverse theories.
Having reviewed four competing theoretical schools and their cleavages, I will
now consider two substantive areas where they overlap: productivity and power.
Measuring Productivity
Productivity concepts in general refer to the aggregate output of joint production.
The labour of workers is combined with capital and land to create a joint product.
Researchers attribute the value of the product, as realised in a market, to inputs of
labour, land, capital, or ‘total factor productivity’. The measurement of productivity
is more contested than one might think.
In the tenancy literature the crop yields were the focus of early paradoxes: Sen
(1964, 1966) showed that small farmers had higher yields than large farmers in India.
However in terms of labour productivity, these farmers worked until their marginal
product had fallen below the local wage. Sen’s model was neoclassical and assumed a
diminishing return to labour at the margin. Later research decomposed productivity
into the productivity of land, returns on capital investment, and the productivity of
labour. However for tenants, records are rarely kept of either the produce of their
rented plot separate from other plots they own, or of the returns to individual
workers (whose time is not recorded, since they are not doing waged labour) who
cultivate the rented plot. Indeed the returns to unpaid household labour are an
untold story in the context of tenancy (Agarwal, 1994). Calculations of productivity
in the aggregate tend to mask important details.
Walker and Ryan, for instance, showed that certain villages in the ICRISAT panel
study had more tenancy than the others, and that the tenant farms had lower
aggregate productivity (Walker and Ryan, 1990; see also Skoufias, 1995). However
Walker and Ryan did not distinguish the productivity of the owned-land plots from
the rented-land plots. In India, well-irrigated land is more likely to have tenants on it
and therefore we might find a higher productivity of land among tenants if
disaggregated data were available (Chaudhuri and Maitra, 2002). However that does
not tell us the distribution of the proceeds of that production. In Punjab, recent
micro studies show that immigrant workers who rent land from farmers have low
yields. They use manual power rather than diesel-driven plows and receive extremely
low returns (Singh, 1995). For poverty studies, analysis of productivity, disaggregated plotwise, and of the returns to labour, disaggregated by the type of worker, are
needed. Few studies of tenants have this level of detail (for example see Jain and
Singh, 2000; Kaul and Pandey, 2000; Sharma, 2000). Given improved data, both
political economy research and neoclassical approaches could contribute to the
interpretation of plot-level productivity and the distribution of the returns to
sharecroppers.
Choice and Power in the Tenancy Literature
The research in the 1980s was bifurcated into studies of choice versus studies of
power. The choice theorists often had demand-supply models of each market in the
background of their research, even when these models had elsewhere turned the
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1143
corner toward analysis of institutions under imperfect information. Srinivasan’s
(1989) model can illustrate the choice orientation of such models in the NCE and
NIE schools. I will then contrast such models with the political economy analysis of
power. Srinivasan (1989) developed a mathematical model to simulate the actions of
a sharecropper toward their landlord once a bank or other alternative credit source
enters the scene. Srinivasan wrote:
If sharecroppers are otherwise identical, then the extent of the incidence of
bonded labour contracts will be determined by the distribution of nonagricultural income. . . . By closely monitoring the sharecropper’s activities and
enforcing a bonded labour contract, the landlord avoids default by the
sharecropper. . . . The sharecropper obviously will choose the creditor and the
amount of credit so as to maximize his lifetime expected welfare . . . (Srinivasan,
1989: 204, 208, 211)
In this model, inequality arises in the distribution of non-agricultural income, but
otherwise worker households are homogeneous. They have no caste or other social
attributes, such as the capacity for shame. Bonded labour arises voluntarily in the
context of inequality; bondage is a free choice to which sharecroppers adhere (if they
are poor) even in the context of competing lenders. Srinivasan’s model was a
response to other models of the rural credit market (Bhaduri, 1983b).
Srinivasan draws an interesting policy implication:
Since, in the above model, the choice of a bonded labour contract is voluntary,
it will be chosen by the sharecropper only if it yields him a higher lifetime
welfare compared with borrowing from the lending institution. Under such
circumstances, the policy of banning bonded labour will be unenforceable or, if
forcibly implemented, will reduce the welfare of the sharecropper. (Srinivasan,
1989: 215)
The interesting assumption here is that the distribution of income is fixed. It acts as a
determinant of outcomes but is not affected by outcomes. In such models, which are
static models, there is no feedback; the world is seen as a closed system.
Deterministic choice models are idealised and do not adequately reflect the real
world.
The models seen in political economy, by contrast, always have a specific locale
and time-period underlying their details. Instead of the universal ‘landlord’
caricature, political economy authors tend to show a competition for power between
specific classes. Each class is seen as a social object, rather than being
anthropomorphised. Bhaduri (who formalised his model) had classes acting in their
own collective interest, affecting other classes, and being reacted upon by those
classes. The four classes mentioned were landlords, merchants, farmers, and
workers. Thus Bhaduri’s (1983b) model was more complex than the bilateral game
theory models of new institutionalist economics. However in Bhaduri’s model,
landlords loaned money, reflecting the northeastern region’s economic structure. In
other parts of India, landlords are less specialised in lending money. Tenant farmers
in the south are more likely to borrow from merchants than from landlords (Olsen,
1144 W. Olsen
1996). The complexity of class structures can be taken into account in nonmathematised approaches to the study of interacting market behaviours (Olsen,
1993). Credit markets, land markets, labour markets and crop markets have all been
seen as linked in this literature.
But there has been a polarisation of pairs of schools (NCE and NIE versus the
MPE and FPE schools). Many studies of choice omit all mention of power, are
methodological individualist, and deny the existence of social classes. Studies of
power in a few cases also deny the possibility of free choice. Brass’s (1986) work on
the deproletarianisation thesis perhaps illustrates the determinism of a Marxist
structuralist approach to causation. This approach to unfreedom is the polar
opposite of the choice theories. A dualism has emerged: choice vs. power-over;
voluntary choice vs. unfreedom. Brass would argue that even if they vouched for
making free choices, workers might still be (really) unfree. A problem arises if a
deterministic structuralist model is seen as an alternative to a choice model.
Deterministic models have little scope for empirical testing. Bhaduri’s (1986) and
Brass’s (1993) Marxist models run the risk of being as idealised, as closed-system,
and as untestable as the models they wish to criticise.
This polarisation by itself is not helpful. Numerous pieces of excellent empirical
research have focused upon both power and choice, to good effect (Athreya et al.,
1990). The contribution of these studies is to make each of these mechanisms an
operationalisable topic for empirical study. Power: how to measure it? Would we
examine outcomes or the ongoing social relations? Should we look at static patterns
of resources or at wealth trajectories? Even more difficulties arise when studying
choice empirically. However it is possible to ask people to describe their choices,
strategies, and habits. This may be a good area for further research.
An improved approach to the linkages between choice and power is also desirable.
Research like that of Genicot (2002), which models choice, leaves us tantalised but no
closer to an empirical research programme linking cognitive frameworks, explicit
choices, subjective preferences, and actions. Genicot showed that a paradox of
unfree labour arises when specific types of worker, such as poor tenants, choose to be
bonded. It is promising that new institutionalist economists like Genicot take such
an interest in the limitations to freedom that arise from ‘mutually advantageous
labor-tying agreements’ (Genicot, 2002: 105). Choice is one proximate cause of
outcomes. Choices are in turn motivated consciously by reasons. Outcomes are also
mediated and caused through structured social relations. The real causes are more
extensive than choice alone, as all agree.
Thus productivity, power, and choice are common themes about which an
empirically grounded debate has occurred. The debate is highly relevant for poverty
reduction.
A theoretical pluralist would add commensurability (that is reference to common
things) to the criteria for choosing between theories. A methodological pluralist
would add the further suggestion that the objects referred to in each theory need to
be operationalisable. I return to this point in Section IV. There is a danger of
verificationism if each theory is permitted to construct its own criteria for validity.
Without some form of operationalisation across theories – either qualitative or
quantitative – it is difficult to make rational judgements about the competing
schools.
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1145
In the rest of this paper reference will be made to specific themes from the tenancy
literature. These claims illustrate the theoretical pluralism that is found among some
of the best research in this area (for example Lanjouw and Stern, 1998; Banerjee
et al., 2002; Genicot, 2002).
III. Commensurability Theories
In this section I describe ways of increasing commensurability of theories.
Three ways to do so are described: using bridging discourses; avoiding verificationism in measurement; and improving the observability of apparently unobservable
phenomena.
Complementarity of Explanations
In this sub-section I focus on the complementarities that are evident, even when
comparing opposed schools. Complementaries in the language used often reflect the
way different theories approach the same (real) thing. Bargaining power in NIE and
class power in MPE, for instance, are competing ways to refer to interpersonal or
inter-household power relations. Another example of a bridge between these
competing theories is their approach to state action, governmental action and, more
generally, collective action. In NCE the state was present primarily as an agent
intervening in markets (setting land-holding ceilings, offering credit to landlords) but
in MPE the state also acts to protect certain classes’ vested interests. The ‘state’ can
be found in both theories, although it is seen differently in each. As NIE develops, it
too refers to state and collective action. For instance, some new institutionalist
authors and most political economy authors agree that the role of the state can be
probed for positive synergies with civil society. Institutionalists argue positively that
regulation and norms shape all markets. State regulation, even if carried out under
federalism as in India, inherently underpins all market action (Harriss-White, 1999).
State regulation may provide benefits to poor people. This position has been put by
Stiglitz thus:
Many of the items that were not on the Washington Consensus10 might bring
both higher growth and greater equality. Land reform itself illustrates the
choices at stake in many countries. . . . The sharecropping system itself weakens
incentives. . . . Land reform, done properly, peacefully, and legally, ensuring that
workers get not only land but access to credit, and the extension services that
teach them about new seeds and planting techniques, could provide an
enormous boost to output. But land reform represents a fundamental change in
the structure of society. (Stiglitz, 2003: 81)
Stiglitz’s focus on the state here marks a divergence from his earlier neoclassical
work.
Other research in India also led toward an empirical finding that the state plays a
role in empowering people through good governance or legal changes. For instance,
Banerjee et al. have shown that the West Bengal state government was able to
improve productivity as well as distributive equity by giving tenants more secure
1146 W. Olsen
access to their plots (Banerjee et al., 2002). Their study used a theoretical model
along with empirical data from West Bengal.
To see the actions of government and other state or quasi-state actors as socially
grounded in concrete structures, and as historically place-specific, but as being
relevant to the economic outcomes of tenancy is to construct a theory that mediates
between NCE, NIE and MPE. In this sense the work by Banerjee et al. (2002) is
theoretical pluralist.
Thus power and the state are common concepts in NIE and MPE, whilst they bear
different meanings and are investigated in different ways in the two schools. NIE
often use a survey method and detailed household financial data, whilst MPE often
uses a historical comparative method with evidence from government documents,
historical records and interviews. The two schools do broach related questions about
the same reality.
This example illustrates the bridging that is done by researchers who know their
competitors’ work well. Each school has a standard discourse in which theories and
falsification tests are couched. A discourse is a set of norms or assumptions for
speech and other communicative acts. A discourse usually consists of a tendency to
combine metaphors, analogies, assumptions, dualisms, and category labels in specific
ways. One school might set up a model and test its implications, whilst another might
take a more inductive approach and may mimic the descriptive patterns found in
historical documents. In general, discourses are the norms for how a school’s authors
refer to events, examine things, collect data, and analyse or interpret data. There are
discursive rules for how data should or should not be manipulated. Statistical
manipulation is common in NCE and NIE, whilst reinterpretation and a
hermeneutic angle are common in MPE.
Bridging discourses are a special type of discourse, deliberately chosen by authors
who have reviewed or used two contrasting theories. They break the rules or
boundaries of Theory A in order to make headway into the realm of Theory B. In
doing so, the bridging discourse creatively changes or challenges Theory B. The
Stiglitz/Bhaduri debate and the Banerjee paper both illustrate discursive bridging.
They are temporary moments of contact between disparate academic schools. At
times, the political economy school may use the survey method to broach questions
of interest to the neoclassical economists (Bardhan and Rudra, 1984), whilst
economists at times use a historical method to broach questions of political economy
(Banerjee et al., 2002). Mixing research methods, in turn, appears to make more
pluralistic theory testing possible.
Idealist Models and the Weaknesses of Testing
Some of the new institutionalist modeling tends to be self-verifying. Whilst testing of
predictions is potentially possible, it is rarely done. Instead there is a process of
estimating parameters, given the assumption that the model fits. Such models are
known as deductivist (Lawson, 1997) or idealist models. They exist only on paper.
There is a danger, common to all theories, that empirical tests will verify their
hypotheses precisely because the tests work within their own terminology. Some
researchers use surveys whose measurements rest within their theoretical discourse
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1147
(for example surveys of household finance which record the household’s total
production and not plot-wise production), and the weaknesses of the theory are
duplicated in the limitations of the empirical testing.
In order to test theories across a range of disciplines, or two schools, it may be
necessary to use innovative instruments (fresh surveys; less structured interviews;
and re-interpretation of documents) with a view to competing theories. Openmindedness at an early stage is helpful here, as seen also in the grounded theory
literature (Lee, 2002). Grounded theory approaches attempt a relatively unbiased
induction from empirical qualitative data.
Operationalising the Unobservables
In the theories found in Figure 2, some objects are difficult to observe, and some are
unobservables (for example utility). Actually these ‘things’, such as power or choices,
can be evidenced by outcomes or events which contingently result from them. Many
unobservables are thus indirectly recordable. The difficulties with observability are
two. Firstly, to look for the thing one presumes it exists. This presumption brings with
it the danger of essentialism. Secondly, most mechanisms work contingently, not
necessarily. For instance, choice outcomes can be observed, but records of the
unselected alternatives are harder to create. Therefore outcomes are only sometimes
evidence of a given cause.
Fleetwood summarises a realist position on unobservables in economics as
follows:
Economics . . . aims to provide powerful explanations and adequate theoryladen ‘descriptions’ of the observable and unobservable socio-economic
structures and causal mechanisms that govern the flux of events observable in
the real world. (Fleetwood, 2002: 44)
This quote usefully highlights the observability of events, in principle, versus the
difficulties with observing underlying social structures and institutions. Fleetwood’s
constructive engagement with the empiricists Boylan and O’Gorman (1995) provides
the groundwork for distinguishing good description from good observation.
Descriptions, according to realists, may include abstractions which refer to
structures even though the underlying observations are only indirect reflections of
the structures. Clearly a programme of careful operationalisation is called for.
IV. Advantages and Limitations of Pluralism
So far this paper has shown that commensurability and discursive bridging help to
make pluralist research possible. A suspension of judgement is needed as a temporary
way to make two theories commensurate in some areas. Careful operationalisation is
then needed. The pluralist is then in a position to compare two theories without
tending to validate their a priori preferred theory. In this section a few comments are
made on the advantages and disadvantages of this form of pluralism. The first is that
poverty reduction becomes part of the discourse of research work.
1148 W. Olsen
Poverty and Tenancy
Methodological pluralist studies such as Dreze et al. (1998), or Athreya et al. (1990),
illustrate the linkages between the study of tenancy and poverty alleviation research.
A meta-analysis of theories of tenancy, which crosses schools and explicitly draws
out comparisons, can develop the ethical implications of changing tenancy relations.
There are two steps in the way a theoretical pluralist might develop these
implications. First, they would examine the explicit or implicit ethical stance of
competing theories (as hinted at, necessarily briefly, in row four of Figure 2).
Secondly, their research could contribute toward the construction of a value stance
and policy implications related to both tenancy and improvements in people’s lives.
These improvements may well be classified as poverty reduction either in economic,
political or social terms.
The content of the moral stances in neoclassical economics and in marxist political
economy (see Figure 2) are strongly differentiated, so I will focus on this contrast. In
NCE, productivity increases are perceived as good, and waste as bad. In MPE,
equality is seen as good and inequality as bad. Furthermore exploitation is
recognised as harmful. Both these latter claims are not accepted by NCE authors.
The MPE school tend to make stronger moral claims than NCE, and to have
substantive value stances, whereas the writers in the NCE school tend to restrict
themselves to procedural evaluations of marginal changes.
To grasp why there are such striking differences in the content of the moral
stances, we can examine the rationale that is given for having a moral stance at all. In
NCE this is usually an argument about Pareto optimality. If there are net economic
gains, then a consensus can perhaps be obtained about the distribution of marginal
gains without threatening anyone’s existing resources. This argument of Pareto
optimality has its roots in liberal economics. It appears regularly in western
neoliberal thinking, as described by Hussain (1991) with respect to Asia, and by Dow
(2002) for economics in general. By contrast, the arguments underlying MPE moral
stances comprise a substantive claim that the reduction of inequality and suffering,
and the removal of exploitation, offer social good. The confidence underlying this
sort of moral statement arises from both the historical roots of Marxist Political
Economy in the notion of social science having an emancipatory role (as described
by Lawson, 1997), and in the philosophical assumptions of MPE authors which tend
to be realist and collectivist. The realist strand in such thinking may lead the authors
to think of moral stances as moral facts – a position described by Smith (1994) as
‘realist’ but not accepted by all realists. Sayer (2000a) for instance, argues that moral
debate is a welcome topic for realists but will tend to lead to contested values and not
to facts about values (Sayer, 2000a: 170–85; see also Sayer, 2000b).
The authors of the MPE school also have an ontological reason why their stance is
so different from that of the neoclassical authors. Their statements relate to
collectivities, not just to individuals. Because the MPE authors recognise the
existence of society as a corporate entity, which can have a social good and social ills,
it is possible to imagine making claims about that which is good for society. For
those NCE authors who are methodological individualist, it is much easier to resist
notions of the social good and to pay attention to differentiated, individual,
subjective notions of what would be good. In philosophy the terms ‘holism’ and
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1149
‘atomism’ are used to describe the two extremes of ontology here: MPE authors
recognise wholes, and use holism, whereas NCE authors have traditionally stressed
individuals and not social wholes. The value stances of the two schools necessarily
reflect, and arise from, these underlying ontological commitments.
In the confines of this paper I cannot extend the discussion of these ethical stances
far, but a growing literature on moral political economy questions the possibility of
separating moral pronouncements from factual statements. One author who makes
reasoned arguments linking facts with values, and values with facts, was Bhaskar
(1979). A scientific realist who discusses the fact-value relation is Williams (2000).
Another realist vision of political economy was offered by the historian and
philosopher MacIntyre (1998). He reviewed the norms of science and how they have
changed over the period since 1900, compared with Greek ethical systems.
MacIntyre argues that Aristotelian ethics are substantive and focus upon the good
of collectivities (chapter 7), but such ethical claims are rarely found in the twentieth
century. In the modern era since the Reformation, he argues, ethical statements have
tended to be more individual-oriented, less substantive, and more subjective (also
argued in MacIntyre, 1985). Modern ethical precepts often recognise a differentiated
society (as does NCE), use notions of free choice, and keep proposed changes within
the legal and regulatory context of a capitalist market framework. Ray and Sayer
have argued that the moral issues raised by contemporary Aristotelians, such as
MacIntyre, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, have not been explored
thoroughly yet (Ray and Sayer, 1999; Sayer, 2000b). Thus a worthwhile debate
can be had regarding ethical assertions in competing conceptualisations of tenancy.
Two concrete comments can also be made about the impact of the moral
stances on the research about tenancy. The first comment shows a limitation of some
existing MPE studies, and the second shows a limitation of some existing NCE
studies.
Firstly, most Marxist writers on Indian tenancy have assumed all tenants to be
poor. Having done so they avoid dealing with reverse tenancy. Reverse tenants use
their bargaining power to rent a desired amount of land from smallholders. The
possibility that the smallholder would willingly and gainfully rent out their land to a
more capital intensive, larger farmer was ignored by MPE researchers such as
Bhaduri (for example Bhaduri, 1997). The a priori judgement that renters are
exploited by landowners was questioned by Stiglitz (1986) because it regrettably
closes down certain avenues of empirical investigation. The theoretical pluralist will
need to have a balanced view of the possibilities rather than a predilection to find
exploitation a priori.
Secondly, the NCE agenda of Pareto-optimal market exchange – usually also
found in NIE – can cause analysts to avoid studying inequality per se. The discourse
of Pareto optimality makes judgements about the distribution of land a matter of
fact, not a question of values. Using bridging discourse it may be possible to broach
questions of equality of access to land, but this is not normally done by NCE
authors.
The discourse of Pareto optimality is persistent in part because of its tendency not
to threaten vested interests. Poverty alleviation debates, by contrast, are at times full
of controversy and do challenge existing distributions of assets. Pluralist approaches
may raise thorny issues about the distribution of land, of which Agarwal’s (1994,
1150 W. Olsen
2003) discussion is one illustration. Agarwal has engaged the Indian government
with policy possibilities regarding changed individual access to land (ibid.) In
discursive terms, intertextuality is the technical word for writings like hers that use
mixtures of NCE and MPE arguments (or in other words those which mix discourses). Intertextuality occurs when two traditions are merged, or appear as
contrasts side-by-side, in a single text (Fairclough, 1992: chapter 4). Fairclough
argues that the study of inequality benefits from conscious meta-study of
intertextuality (ibid: 200–07). The possibility that orthodox economic theory has
been implicitly conservative has been suggested by a range of meta-analysts (for
example Byres, 2003). The case for a more explicit discussion of values in poverty
research links together the present collection of papers.
In this sub-section I have argued that pluralists explicitly do moral political
economy, that in doing so the poverty of some ideal-typical agents (in this case
tenants) should not be assumed a priori, and that bridging discourses might bring
substantive moral issues into focus – notably the substantive moral issue of the
distribution of assets. These arguments bring the economics of tenancy toward a
heterodox paradigm within which ethics are not easily, or even desirably, separated
from the description of a concrete situation. Such an ethically self-conscious moral
political economy would cross the disciplines of politics and economics as well as
sociology.
Relational Approaches to Poverty Studies are Preferred
The studies reviewed in Section II were of two broad types. One type uses an
individualistic framework, often anthropomorphising households as if they were
rational people, and examines the rationality of their decisions. An example is
Agrawal (1999), who studied moral hazard in a model that was methodological
individualist in its ontology. In this context poverty is seen as a characteristic of
person/households, and poverty’s causes are seen as being hidden, or as residing
in the person’s inadequate resources. The inadequate nature of such rational
choice theories for the study of poverty is self-evident. It appears to blame the
victim of poverty without recognising the background causes and history of
poverty.
The other type of study sees households in dynamic relation to each other, socially
grounded in groups like castes and classes (Bernstein and Byres, 2001). In these
studies, the structures of society interact with the intentional agency of actors in
society. These dynamic, relational models are difficult to put into mathematical
format (Sayer, 1992: chapter 6). They offer explanations that are rich in historical
and social background. They also help to place poverty in its social context.
Relational studies of poverty examine the meanings of poverty to actors within social
structures. By contrast, residual approaches to poverty often separate out the poor
from the rest as if they were a separable, distinct group. The political economy
models in this paper took a relational approach to poverty. The pluralist research by
Lanjouw and Stern et al. (1998) also takes a relationship approach to poverty by
repeatedly offering glimpses of the whole income- and wealth-distribution. Athreya
et al. (1990) is more overtly relational in its approach to the class structures of south
India.
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1151
The Danger of Undisciplined Research
However, pluralist research has one main disadvantage; it might be seen as having no
boundaries. Empirical research might have to cut across several disciplines. Local
studies would have to be integrated with larger-scale studies, and geography, biology
and ecology would have to be linked to the social sciences. The wise research team
will know that having a focused set of research questions is important. However,
limiting one’s theoretical basis to a single theory has been shown to be a weakness.
This weakness brings to mind the image of the ‘seven blind people feeling different
parts of an elephant’. Each person, with their own standpoint, gets a different finding
(it’s hairy, it’s smooth; it’s flat, it’s round). Talking to one another, they can reach a
more rounded conclusion (it’s an elephant). At the literature review stage a pluralist
will be quite wide ranging, and may make use of teamwork to extend their
knowledge. At the later empirical stages they must make some strategic decisions to
narrow their focus.
Advantages of Having Competition Among Schools
Even for those who do econometric statistical work, pluralism may have its
advantages. In this paper I advocated recognising that theories are constructed in
specific social milieus. An economist might self-consciously choose a range of
theories, not exclusively using those of the rational-choice kind. One example of such
pluralist research is Sharma and Dreze (1998). They conduct a new institutionalist
analysis whilst showing awareness of the land distribution and of the political
economy debates about ‘the social distance between tenants and landlords’ (Sharma
and Dreze, 1998: 499). Sharma and Dreze note that over the decades 1970-1993 there
are both inegalitarian developments and increasing equality between landlords and
tenants in Palanpur (north India) (ibid: 500). Their results thus refer to the political
economy school’s claims. In choosing to refer to both NIE and MPE theories, the
rationale is not simply to make conclusions from empirical testing. Sharma and
Dreze are aware that empirical tests tend not to falsify the underlying theories. Their
pluralist theorization may respond to the needs of their audience and it need not be
restricted to the models typical of a particular theory.
Lanjouw and Stern (1998) also illustrate pluralism by compiling chapters on
inequality and poverty alongside new institutionalist chapters and historical
background chapters. Their pluralism is both theoretical and methodological, as
seen in Dreze et al’s (1998) introductory chapter where social mobility is considered
alongside economic change. They use methodological pluralism in the sense of
mixing statistical methods with qualitative field data. Their qualitative research
makes the introductory descriptions (ibid: 1–113) and concluding chapters
particularly convincing, although they do not go so far as to use a hermeneutic
method that investigates meanings.
IV. Summary and Conclusions
In this paper I have surveyed an area of research which illustrates the benefits of
methodological and theoretical pluralism. In Section I some dangers of ‘essentialism’
1152 W. Olsen
were mentioned. In Section II I reviewed the choice vs. power debate in the
theorization of tenancy. Several authors cut across borderlines, used bridging
discourses, and tried to integrate or challenge competing theories. Power and poverty
issues are taken up by all four schools of thought on tenancy. Choice and freedom,
too, have been the subject of research in political economy as well as in neoclassical
economics. Productivity and its measurement create an interesting area for further
operationalisation work, since disaggregated measures of inputs and remuneration
are needed if tenancy is to be linked empirically to poverty outcomes. In Section III,
issues of commensurability were highlighted. I showed that both economic theories
and political-economy theories of tenancy moved toward an analysis of beneficial
collective action. The exemplar used here (Indian tenancy regulation) illustrated
aspects of interdisciplinarity commonly found in poverty research. In Section IV I
reviewed some strengths and limitations of theoretical pluralism.
For some, it is self-evident that crossing disciplines is enriching. Bridging the
quantitative-qualitative divide leads to a challenging empirical agenda, which has
not yet been fully explored. For instance, the subjective views of the agents involved
can be explored (Olsen, 1998). Testing, using empirical data alone, is unlikely to
resolve theoretical debates. Dow (2002) describes how an oversimplified Popperian
testing was used in earlier (for example 1980s) neoclassical economic practice
(Popper, 1963). Dow argues that
The ‘Duhemian problem’ is particularly difficult in economics; the complexity of
economic phenomena and questions about the empirical basis of the discipline
make empirical testing an extremely complex affair. (Dow, 2002: 102–03)
Combining qualitative insights with primary survey data as seen in Banerjee et al.
(2002: 255–65) in particular may be extremely useful in development economics.
Such research is relevant for the reduction of adverse incorporation of peasants into
market activity, and hence for reducing poverty. In conclusion, it is good to avoid a
bifurcation in which development economists develop mathematical models which
others do not understand or read (Layder, 1993: 202).
Acknowledgements
The support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council is gratefully
acknowledged. The work was part of the programme of the ESRC Global Poverty
Research Group (grant no. M571255001). I am grateful for comments received after
presenting this paper at a GPRG workshop and at the conference of the
Development Studies Association, Glasgow, September 11, 2003. The reviewer’s
and editors’ comments were valuable in improving the paper.
Notes
1. Figure 1 defines the terms used in the paper. See also Smith (1998) for a full discussion of most of these
terms.
2. Sayer suggests that comparing the results of extensive methods with the findings of intensive methods
may be useful.
Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping 1153
3. In the philosophy of science a technical term, idealism, is used to draw a contrast between purely ideabased and purely reality-based research. However this polarity can easily be exaggerated. Realist
research requires conceptual frameworks, and therefore it is not completely divorced from the mental
maps of those who make mathematical models.
4. According to atomism, structures, rather than being self-transforming and organic, are simply sets of
related objects). In realist literature the most widely criticized form of atomism is methodological
individualism. Toye (2003) offers a review of the role of atomism within development economics.
5. The literature on critical realism per se dates back to about 1979 whereas Berger and Luckmann’s
work dated 1966 would place itself under the different heading of a moderately realist social
constructivism. The origins of critical realism however lie in marxism, critical social science, and the
idea of progressive social science, which arose in earlier centuries (Archer et al., 1998).
6. This claim is often referred to as the Duhem–Quine thesis. An excellent summary is provided by Quine
(1953).
7. The debate over how to interpret Kuhn has taken place in economics (for example Cook, 1999), and in
the history of science (reviewed by Manicas, 1987). Two variants predominate in the interpretation of
Kuhn’s thesis. The weaker variant argues that scientific paradigms are socially grounded, but can
nevertheless be compared and contrasted. According to this weak interpretation it is a worthwhile
project to make rational judgements about the worth of competing theories. A stronger school of
interpretation of Kuhn’s work argues that paradigms are simply incommensurate and that there is no
possibility of rationally comparing them. This latter interpretation (the ‘strong’ school in the sociology
of science) argues that paradigms are primarily socially constructed. In this paper, the weaker
interpretation of Kuhn is applied. For a general discussion of this debate, and a review of its
implications for economics, see Dow (2002).
8. The 8 per cent figure for India is likely to be an underestimate because land reforms have created an
atmosphere within which landowners avoid giving details of tenancy to outsiders. The 15 per cent
figure is from Shankar (1999).
9. There is not enough space to cover all the schools in depth here. For instance, development research
links tenancy to basic problems of poverty, food security, and the evolution of rights (see Ellis, 2000;
Sawadogo and Stamm, 2000); sociologists studying tenancy include Grigsby (1996) and
Gray and Kevane (2001); feminist studies include Agarwal (1984, 1994, 2003) and Jackson (2002).
In the sociological and feminist literature, the meanings of tenancy are unpacked for differentiated
actors.
10. The Washington consensus refers to a synthesis of neoliberal and neoclassical thought favouring free
markets.
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